Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE END, by EDOUARD JOACHIM CORBIERE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE END, by                    
First Line: Well now, these mariners - sailors, captains
Last Line: -o let them roll, parvenu landlubbers!
Alternate Author Name(s): Corbiere, Tristan
Subject(s): Death; Sailing & Sailors; Dead, The; Seamen; Sails


Well now, these mariners-sailors, captains,
All in their great Ocean swallowed forever . . .
Who left nonchalant for their faraway journeys,
Are dead-as true as they left.

What then! It's their trade; they died with their boots on!
Their snifters to their hearts, all alive inside their capotes . . .
-Dead . . . No thanks: Lady Death has no sea legs;
Let her sleep with you: She's your good wife . . .
-As for them, none of it: Complete! washed away by the wave!
Or lost in a squall . . .

A squall . . . that's death, you think? The lower sail
Pounding across the water! -That's floundering . . .
A blast of the leaden sea, then the high mast
Whipping at wave level-and that's foundering.

-Foundering. -Fathom this word. Your death is mighty pale
And nothing much on board, in a raging gale . . .
Nothing much against the great bitter smile
Of the sailor struggling. -Come now, make way! -
Death the windy old phantom changes face:
The Sea! . . .

Drowned? -Aw, go on! You drown in fresh water!
-Sunk! Crew and cargo! And, down to the little ship's-boy,
Defiance in their eyes, in their teeth curses!
Spitting a death-rattle quid to the spume,
And downing without puking the big salty cup . . .
-The way they downed their snifters-

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

-No six-foot-under for them, or cemetery rats:
Them, they head for the sharks! The soul of a sailor,
Instead of oozing in your potatoes,
Breathes with every wave!

-See there on the horizon the billow heaving;
The amorous belly, you'd say,
Of a whore in heat, half-soused . . .
They're there! -The billow has a cave-

-Listen, listen to the storm bellow! . . .
Their anniversary. -It returns quite often-
O poet, keep your blindman's songs to yourself;
-For them: the De Profundis the wind trumpets!

. . . Let them roll eternally in the virgin spaces! . . .
Let them roll green and bare,
Without pine and without nails, without lid, without candles . . .
-O let them roll, parvenu landlubbers!





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